Malicious media

Aidan White and his federation of journalists have long been integrated with other foreign NGOs that seek to denigrate the government of Hugo Chávez (The press in Venezuela, December 4).

White's notion that the journalists of Venezuela are trying "to maintain" some sort of professionalism is absurd, since most of them never acquired it in the first place.

No tradition of independent journalism exists in Latin America; journalists invariably back rightwing generals or utopian socialists according to taste.

Chávez's response to the 2002 coup was far from "intemperate"- the popular demand was for him to close down the media empires that had helped organise his overthrow.

They are there to this day, campaigning for the opposition together with White's "independent" journalists. None of this would matter, were their tendentious views not so frequently echoed by foreign journalists in Caracas.Richard GottLondon